Five years of observations, research, and hard-won lessons from working with high performers navigating stress and burnout recovery.
29 articles
Six years ago, I wrote my first blog post about burnout. If I had to distill everything I've learned into one sentence: the problem is never discipline. The problem is the operating system.
LeBron James spends $1.5 million a year on his body. Not on training. On recovery. Nobody calls him weak for that. So why do we treat executives like they're supposed to run on fumes?
There's something I need to explain that doesn't get talked about enough. And it's the reason so many high performers genuinely believe they're fine when they're anything but.
Every year, I look at the numbers. Every year, they get worse. But 2025 wasn't just worse. It was a different category.
I've worked with enough tech executives to see a pattern the industry doesn't want to acknowledge. Silicon Valley has a burnout problem that makes other industries look mild.
A woman contacted me after reading my article about unexplained physical symptoms. She'd seen a cardiologist, a neurologist, and her PCP. All tests normal. She didn't feel anxious. She felt broken.
I need to tell you about someone. He came to me in late 2024. Senior executive at a financial services firm. His wife had moved out three weeks before our first session.
I get emails about this more than almost any other topic. Unexplained physical symptoms that no doctor can explain. Chest tightness. Heart palpitations. Digestive problems.
I wrote about the Achiever's Trap three years ago. I understand it much better now. And what I understand scares me more than what I knew then.
I need to talk about something that should be front-page news but somehow isn't. Chronic burnout physically reduces the size of your brain.
You did everything right. Went to bed at a reasonable hour. Got your eight hours. And you woke up feeling like you hadn't slept at all. Sound familiar?
I wrote about the five stages of burnout two years ago. Since then, I've refined the framework based on working with over sixty clients. Here's what I've learned.
I need to be honest about something. The beginning of burnout recovery is uncomfortable. Not in a "growth is hard" motivational poster kind of way. Genuinely uncomfortable.
Three years ago I wrote a blog post called "I Used to Think Burnout Was Just Being Tired." That post changed the direction of my entire career.
If you're in Stage 3 or Stage 4 burnout, you've probably told yourself "I'll deal with it after this quarter." Let's talk about what one more year actually costs.
There's a false binary in corporate culture: you can either perform or you can recover. Pick one. This binary is false. And it's keeping people stuck.
He's a founder. Series B startup. Moving fast, hiring fast, burning cash. He came to me because he was having trouble making decisions. His brain felt "foggy."
The most burned-out people I work with are not the ones who are struggling financially or professionally. They're the ones who have everything they thought they wanted.
You know the pattern. You fall asleep fine, maybe even quickly because you're exhausted. Then somewhere between 2 and 4 AM, your eyes snap open. And your brain immediately starts running.
I'm about to say something that goes against almost every wellness recommendation out there. For some burned-out people, meditation is the wrong intervention.
Most people think burnout is binary. You're either burned out or you're not. That's like saying you're either healthy or you have cancer. There's a whole spectrum in between.
I know this title is going to bother some people. But I need to say it because the way we categorize burnout is keeping people stuck.
Nobody talks about the loneliness of leadership. Not the kind where you don't have people around you. The kind where you're surrounded by people and still completely alone.
Every Monday morning, millions of people drag themselves to work feeling like the weekend never happened. Two days off, and they're just as exhausted as they were on Friday.
I want to talk about something that most people in high-pressure jobs don't want to hear. Your body is keeping a record of every deadline, every conflict, every sleepless night.
The traits that make someone exceptional at their job are often the same traits that make them vulnerable to burnout. And nobody talks about this.
For the first year and a half of working with burned-out clients, I was giving advice that didn't work. Not bad advice, exactly. Standard advice. And almost none of it was making a real difference.
"I thrive under pressure. Always have. It's what makes me good at what I do." I've heard some version of this from almost every high performer I've worked with.
Two years ago, if someone had told me that burnout was a nervous system problem, I would have nodded politely and thought they were overcomplicating things. I was wrong.
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